WATN: Canton native isn't dead, just low profile

Canton native Jon Alvarez joined the Army Reserve at the age of 39. Back in 2005, he was an outspoken conservative activist. These days, he keeps a lower profile.

Shane Hoover CantonRep.com staff writer @shooverREP

Jon Alvarez was an easier man to find before he went to war.

He keeps a lower profile these days.

Alvarez, a Canton native living in central New York, made the news in 2005 when he enlisted in the Army Reserve at age 39 after the age limit was raised.

The country was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, and Alvarez, a conservative activist, said he didn't want to look back at age 60 and "regret not doing what I needed to do."

"George Bush is going to go down as one of the greatest presidents," Alvarez told The Repository in 2005. "I want to be a part of that."

Alvarez made the cut and deployed to Baghdad and Abu Ghraib with the 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion in 2008, tasked with reconstruction work.

He sent updates to the Syracuse Post-Standard, including a picture of himself surrounded by Iraqi children on New Year's Day 2009, and wrote the paper a lengthy letter after his return later that year.

Iraq had been an eye-opening experience, and he had found new perspective on his personal life, and "a new sense of appreciation for life itself and the benefits of living in the United States of America," Alvarez wrote.

He also expressed frustration with what he called the military's waste of tax dollars.

"It's time to bring all of our soldiers home from Iraq and let the Iraqis rebuild their own country," he wrote.

As for himself, Alvarez wrote that he was back on his farm in Hannibal, N.Y., a community of 4,800. He was looking forward to being a director of the Baldwinsville Chamber of Commerce and getting back to selling real estate.

LIFE AFTER WAR

Two online memorial pages claim Alvarez died in Clancy, Mont., on Oct. 31, 2011. They are hoaxes, but that doesn't make Alvarez any easier to find.

The St. Thomas Aquinas High School alumni office had no information on Alvarez, a 1984 graduate.

His email account from 2005 no longer works. He isn't with the Baldwinsville Chamber of Commerce and the phone for his real estate office rings to another agent.

Alvarez didn't respond to a letter mailed by The Repository, or to an interview request made through a local family member, who explained that Alvarez doesn't want to be in the public eye.

Still, snippets of his life can be pieced together from media reports.

After his return from Iraq in 2009, Alvarez hosted an AM talk radio show for Baldwinsville, N.Y.,-based WFBL.

Alvarez had never been shy about his conservative views, and credited the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with stirring his political activism.

Before joining the military, Alvarez founded a group to protest movies starring actors with "anti-American" views. After enlisting, he posted an online contest for the best papier-mâché pig made from pages of the Quran. He took it down at the Army's request.

Alvarez created controversy in February 2010 when he created a "tribute" Facebook page for a man who crashed an airplane into the federal building in Austin, Texas, according to central New York media outlets.

He ended his radio show the following month.

The last mention of Alvarez in local media is from the fall of 2011. He had a dispute with the town of Hannibal over a fence he built at his farm on Sixty Six Road. Town officials said it was too close to the road and removed it after a court fight. Alvarez recorded the removal and posted the video to YouTube on Dec. 16, 2011.

"He's been very quiet these last couple of years," said Oswego County Sheriff Reuel A. Todd.

Hannibal Town Supervisor Ronald Greenleaf agreed, adding that Alvarez still lives at the farm.

"Matter of fact," Greenleaf said last month, "I just saw him here about a week ago feeding his cattle."